Thoughts on Anti-Semitism

The first time I heard, in person, an anti-Semitic remark I was 24 or 25. It was not directed at me. I was in the Ansonia, Conn., bureau office of The New Haven Register writing a story while two late-teenage girls in the next room discussed their car buying adventures. Unhappy with the price she was offered, one of the girls said she would try to “Jew them down.”

I remember recoiling at the words but remained silent. The bubble I had grown up in had been punctured. I was no longer in Brooklyn. 

In the Brooklyn of my youth almost everyone I encountered was Jewish. I went to Jewish day schools through twelfth grade. My summers were spent at Jewish sleepaway camps. Brooklyn College was overwhelmingly Jewish. All my friends outside school were Jewish. 

Indeed, the only gentiles I interacted with were the workers in my father’s factory and the housekeeper-cooks my mother employed so she could join my father at what she euphemistically called “the Place.” I knew most of them by name and task: Eloise who sewed lace onto the slips and panties pieced together by Big Mary and Little Mary, Solita who packed the finished goods, a dozen to a box, Ricky the piece goods cutter, James the shipping clerk and overall heavy lifter, and Lucy, the floor lady who supervised all the workers and who, in my parents’ later years when they no longer required a full-time housekeeper-cook, came every week to their home to clean and sit with my mother. Our housekeeper-cooks were mostly black—Bertha and Virginia being the most prominent and long-tenured. Bertha baked the best butter pound cake I ever tasted. Virginia was a better cook than baker. She and James chaperoned my sister Lee’s Sweet 16 party in our basement, though our parents were not too thrilled to discover Virginia had laced her several glasses of milk with scotch. 

One of my high school social studies teachers tried to enlighten his students about ignorance in the outside world, ignorance that can lead to violence. Lou Morose grew up in Albany in the 1920s and 1930s. Often, he told us, gentiles would rub the top of his skull. They were searching for his horns. Boys and men who barely had an appreciation of any artwork were instilled with the canard transmitted down from Michelangelo’s famous statue of Moses from whose forehead the sculptor fashioned two goat horns, a misrepresentation of the Bible phrase that light emanated from the lawgiver’s head when he descended a second time from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. 

While I was enjoying a shtetl-like sheltered life among fellow religionists, Gilda’s childhood in Saratoga Springs in upstate New York was far different. During the winter gentile boys threw rocks encased in snowballs at Jewish children as they exited a school bus outside their Hebrew school. When they sought relief from their rabbi he simply suggested they move faster from the bus to the school door. 

I didn’t encounter any discrimination at The Register. If anything, I benefitted from reverse discrimination. The managing editor who hired me grew up in Brooklyn, went to a rival Jewish high school and, perhaps most serendipitously, shared my first name. Murrays stick together. 

To my knowledge, I never encountered any anti-Semitism during my subsequent career as a journalist at Chain Store Age, though I do recall a Rose’s discount store manager in rural North Carolina saying he immediately recognized me and one of my staff, Marty Brochstein, as visitors from New York the moment we walked into his store. Marty and I had no difficulty understanding his drift.

As parents, Gilda and I observed incidents that challenged the protective bubble in which any good parent tries to envelop their children. 

One December, when Dan was about seven and Ellie four, he asked why so many Jewish homes displayed Christmas lights. For him and Ellie their only reference were friends from their Jewish day school. They thought everyone in White Plains was Jewish. Thus began their education into the real world. 

Five or so years later Dan and his school basketball teammates encountered overt anti-Semitism. Players on the opposing public school team taunted them by throwing pennies on the court. 

Though my brother and I attended modern Orthodox religious day schools, we never wore yarmulkas before or after classes. It had nothing to do with fear. Our safety was pretty much assured in our neighborhood. At Brooklyn College our friends, almost all graduates of similar Jewish day schools, didn’t wear them either, even when eating. The symbols of religious observance were not as openly displayed 50 years ago. At least not by my crowd.

I suspect no Jew, even the most religiously garbed, presumes he or she will be attacked on the street, much like the public at large does not feel they will be mugged when outside. 

For a time back in 1968 assaults on individual Jews and Jewish institutions seemed to be daily transgressions in New York City. To combat the appearance of Jewish passivity Rabbi Meir Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League. The objective was “to combat anti-Semitism in the public and private sectors of life in the United States of America.”

I recall discussions about the JDL among my friends as we sat in the Brooklyn College cafeteria, but no one I knew joined the JDL, for sure after it turned more extreme, eventually to be labeled a “right wing terrorist organization” in 2001 by the FBI. 

Antisemitic attacks domestically and abroad have risen to intolerable levels. Some reasons can be traced to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some to religious bigotry. Some to gang membership practices. Some to economic imbalance. Some to the very conditions JDL identified 50 years ago: “political extremism” and “racist militancy.” And some to that same condition my teacher Mr. Morose related—ignorance. Plain and simple ignorance that shuts out the humanity and tolerance of anyone different. 

More from Saratoga, Basal Cells and the Baby Carriage

My brother called when we were in Saratoga Springs last week. He had a bone to pick about one of my blogs. I thought he would be upset upon reading I might not return his old baseball glove after I cleaned it up (or even before). Nah. He was more concerned about his reputation, piqued about my implication that he did not have an outdoorsman’s gene.

He wanted to set the record straight—back in his college days he drove cross-country with his friend Marty for six weeks, staying in hotels for no more than a combined week’s worth of days. The rest of the time they slept in tents or under the skies. They trekked down and up the Grand Canyon. 

And, after he married Annette, he took her on camping trips, as well. I seem to recall this, but I’m waiting for confirmation from Annette.

Bernie reached me while I was in the parking lot of a Price Chopper supermarket in Lake George, about to go in to purchase a turkey sandwich. The town was virtually closed down for the fall and winter seasons. Even the McDonald’s had a chain across its driveway with a “see you next year” sign.

Along the Northway they’ve updated the rest stop road signs. Now the signs read “Text Stop. Rest Stop.”

It’s easy to tell the locals from the tourists up north. With temperatures hovering in the 40s, tourists like me bundled up in down jackets, sometimes over fleece vests. Locals, meanwhile, scampered about in sweatshirts and even just the occasional T-shirt. 

The local newspaper, The Saratogian, has transitioned to a mostly on-line news source. Its old building on Lake Street has been sold. The Saratogian’s staff awaits a new home. 

One thing I learned is The Saratogian is now owned by Journal Register Company, part of Digital First Media, the same outfit that owns The New Haven Register where I started my journalism career in 1972.

Mohs Update: It’s confirmed, I have another basal cell carcinoma on my nose. Seeing a surgeon on Friday to schedule removal. 

Third Life: The baby carriage Gilda’s sister gave us that I used to transport wood, that I put out to pasture (bulk garbage pickup) last week, apparently has a new life. Someone came to our cul-de-sac and liberated the conveyance before the sanitation engineers showed up. I haven’t seen it around our neighborhood carrying any babies, or wood.

Remembering the Amazin' Mazer and a Return to Saratoga

Bill Mazer died last week. His funeral was Sunday. He was 92. A New York, mostly radio, personality, Mazer was part of Gilda's and my large sphere of associations. Mazer and his wife Dutch, really Dora but everyone called her Dutch, were members of our temple. Before Gilda returned to full time work she often would attend functions hosted by Dutch at the Mazer home in Scarsdale.

My link to Mazer goes back to the beginning of his tenure as the dean, perhaps the originator, of sports-talk radio. A Brooklyn native, Mazer returned to New York City in 1964 to host an afternoon sports show on WNBC-AM. My friends Jerry and Stanley were smitten with his broadcast. They became obsessed with getting on the air with him to ask a question that could stump his vast knowledge of sports, which hardly ever happened and for which he would become known as the Amazin’. I suggested we ask if he knew of Eddie Giacomin, at the time a minor league goaltender but soon to become a Hall of Fame netminder for the NY Rangers. We got through the screening. I asked my question which Mazer quickly devoured. That was 50 years ago. Wow.

We could not attend Mazer’s funeral. We were in Saratoga Springs, NY, for a nurse practitioners conference for Gilda. More than 50 years ago, 56 to be exact, Gilda moved from Saratoga to Brooklyn.

We spent four days in Saratoga where Gilda was born and lived her first eight years. Back then, her family owned a three-story home (with a basement that was a stop on the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves in the mid-19th century) and two hotels at the north end of Broadway, the Empire and the Brooklyn. In the early 1970s the city obtained the home and hotels through eminent domain. It built the City Center convention and conference hall and an adjoining hotel, now a Hilton, on the property. 

The conference was at the City Center and the Hilton, so we stayed at the hotel. Inside the City Center, Gilda noticed the original Hotel Brooklyn sign hanging on a wall. Saturday night we tried to eat at the Olde Bryan Inn on Maple Street at the rear of her family's former property, but a 90 minute wait—no reservations taken—defused that idea. A well known restaurant these days, the inn served as the hotels’ laundry during Gilda's years in Saratoga.

We've been to Saratoga many times, partly because Ellie attended Skidmore College there and for several years we attended an annual conference in the town produced by one of my magazine’s business partners, David Deutsch. 

This wasn't the first time we stayed at this hotel. About 10 years ago we spent a weekend there with our friends Linda and Jacob who had never been to Saratoga. We arrived around 7 pm. The hotel was sold out, but we had guaranteed reservations. As Linda registered for her room, however, the desk clerk apologized that the only accommodation available was a smoking room. She shrugged and accepted the room.

I overheard this exchange from my spot on the adjacent line. I expected similar treatment, only to be told the last available room they could give me was the 2,000-square foot presidential suite. Would that be okay? 

You could have driven a truck through Linda’s dropped jaw when she heard that. I felt a momentary tinge of guilt, but it quickly passed.

A Story Full of Irony

Here’s a story full of irony. But first, I'm indebted to Ken G for turning me on several months to a most interesting and educational web site http://jewishcurrents.org/jewdayo which delivers a daily recap, from a Jewish perspective, of four important events or people from that day in history. Regrettably, I don't always read the historical notes each day they appear in my email, which explains why I am behind with this blog entry from a missive from last week.

For last Wednesday, June 13, the Jewdayo message revolved around one of the first widely publicized anti-Semitic events in U.S. history. Seems a certain Judge Henry Hilton, in 1877, refused to allow a wealthy and politically influential banker and railroad investor, Joseph Seligman, to stay at the Grand Union Hotel he owned in Saratoga Springs, NY. As Jewdayo explained, “Hilton, a member of the Boss Tweed political machine, had a personal grudge with Seligman, who was a member of an anti-Tweed political faction—but the reason offered to Seligman for being denied a room in the hotel (where he had previously stayed several times) was that business was off because gentile customers did not like sharing the hotel with "Israelites," therefore all Jews were being barred from registering.”

In short order, signs proclaiming “No Jews or Dogs Admitted Here” sprouted up in many hotels across the country.

Here’s irony Number One: Though he shared the same name with Conrad Hilton, who wasn’t born until 1887, Judge Hilton was no relation to the famous hotelier.

Irony Number Two: Some 45 years after Judge Hilton died in 1899, the Grand Union was bought by a syndicate of Jewish investors, Tikvah Associates, Inc. of New York City. Gilda’s father, Irving Barasch, was president of Tikvah Associates. Irving’s family owned two hotels in Saratoga Springs, the Empire and the Brooklyn. Both served kosher food to their Jewish clientele.  But anti-Semitism still ran strong in the village. Within months, civic pressure forced Irving and his partners to sell the Grand Union. 

Irony Number Three: The Grand Union, at one time the world’s largest hotel, was demolished in 1952-3, replaced by (wait for it) .... a Grand Union supermarket. At one time one of the nation’s largest supermarket chains, Grand Union is now just 21 stores and is part of Tops Markets of Buffalo.

Irony Number Four: Conrad Hilton’s hotel chain eventually came to Saratoga. The Saratoga Hilton is at the north end of Broadway, exactly where the Empire and Brooklyn Hotels stood before they were taken by eminent domain in the early 1970s as part of Saratoga’s redevelopment. 

Irony Number Five: Wikipedia says In 1879 Judge Hilton bought a 1,500-acre estate named "Woodlawn" in Saratoga Springs. Following his death “the property was left to decay, and was auctioned off as eight parcels in 1916. A portion of Woodlawn is now the campus of Skidmore College.” Our daughter Ellie is a graduate of Skidmore College.